Twitch today launched a new "IRL" category that lets members broadcast video of whatever they do when they're not in front of the TV or computer, the Amazon-owned company's latest expansion beyond the world of video game streaming.

The IRL category—a nod to Internet shorthand for "in real life"—is similar to Facebook or Twitter's live-streaming options, but Twitch says gamers are keen to show off their real-life antics to other members who share like-minded pursuits.

"While gaming is their core identity, what we've heard repeatedly from them is that they are interested in sharing their everyday lives, thoughts, and opinions with their communities," Twitch CEO Emmett Shear said in a statement.

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IRL will be powered by the Twitch mobile app, which will get native streaming in 2017, letting users go live directly from their phone's camera. For now, broadcasters can stream content from their living room or desktop setups. Twitch has also updated its community guidelines to specifically allow the broadcasting of non-game content.

Longtime Twitch fans will note a resemblance between IRL and Justin.tv, a non-game streaming platform started by Shear and others as a companion to Twitch. The service allowed a broad range of content and was criticized for its lax enforcement of copyright laws. Justin.tv shut down in 2014, shortly before Amazon announced it would acquire the parent company of both sites, Twitch Interactive.

A Twitch spokesperson said IRL will pursue a different direction from Justin.tv, in that it will follow Twitch's mission of being "hyper-focused on the community and their wants," instead of a platform to stream random content.

As a hardware analyst, Tom tests and reviews laptops, peripherals, and much more at PC Labs in New York City. He previously covered the consumer tech beat as a news reporter for PCMag in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, where he rode in several self-driving cars and witnessed the rise and fall of many startups. Before that, he worked for PCMag's sister site, Computer Shopper, where he occasionally dunked waterproof hard drives in glasses of water. In his spare time, he's written on topics as...
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